“We’ve got quite good partnership arrangements with our senior HR advisers and management teams but want to develop that further into more of a business partner model,” she said.

She added that the project would result in at least £1m a year in savings after the first two years.

Three new senior HR roles are to be created, but Clarke ruled out any forced job losses among her team.

“I am not anticipating any compulsory redundancies but there will be reductions in staffing; we will work out the detail for each post going forward but some staff will change jobs, some vacancies will be deleted and some staff might be redeployed,” she said.